The Rwandan genocide
Mahmood Mamdani; When victims become killers
Girard in Africa
Introduction
 Theory as heuristic tool.
 Scales: state, community, domestic -> Geometry of Violence
 Demand: honour particularity, recognise universality.
 Aporia of collective violence (II): particularity/universality.
 In African studies: exotic and banal.
 No solution: beyond the impasse
 Not this or that; but this and that.
 Working the particular (Mamdani) and the universal (Girard)
The particular
Historical conditions for the possibility of Rwandan genocide
Three:
 identity,
 revolution [founding],
 genocide [iteration])
1. First major theme: Identity
Introduction
 Colonial anthropology: difference = difference of origins.
Migration hypothesis..
 Responses: 1) differences = social selection (elites breed and feed
selectively. 2) migration, yes; relevance? If migration is a fact, so
is shared living for 500 years.
 Shared community: economic, cultural and political level.
 Economic: Difference agriculturalist (Hutu) and pastoralist (Tutsi)
did not precede their settling down; enforced through political
power.
 Cultural: language = Kinyarwanda; predates formation of Rwanda
state and still exceeds it. Reproduced through patrilineal descent.
 Result: Hutu and Tutsi the result of state power and patriarchal
ideology.
a. Racialisation:
 History of “race”: 1700-1880 “race” distinguishes between
“European Africa,” “Africa Proper” and “Asiatic Africa” (attached
to Eurasia).
 Sahara divides European and Proper Africa. See Mamdani, p78
 Hamitic hypothesis no. 1: Negro descendents of Ham, cursed to be
slaves, black as sign of curse. Justification for slave-trade;
 Colonialism reveals Saharan trade-network and ancient
civilizations.
 By 1800 Hamitic hypothesis troubled.
 Solution: civilization brought by Caucasians under black skin.
 Result: Egyptians, Nubians, Ethiopians = Hamitic. (Africans
Proper not human enough to be Hamitic)
 Tutsi said to be one of many Hamitic groups -> Migration
hypothesis.
 Why so powerful in Rwanda?
 Racialised identity reproduced through institutions that reproduced
Tutsi superiority.
 Intellectuals can discard the myth; but not if it is institutionally
entrenched.
b. Institutionalising
 Germans scramble; Belgians invade (1916).
 Combined efforts of Catholic church and colonial state.
 Church: “Europeans under a black skin.” Slaughter in churches?
(see Geometry, p55).
 Institutionalisation: education, state administration, Church
 Schooling: in French for Tutsi (assimilation; rule); in Kiswahili for
the Hutu called “Bantu” (Bantu Education).
 Administratively: indirect rule. Decrease the power of the king,
colonisers appoint chiefs, no community accountability; make all
chiefs Tutsi
 Culmination: census and racial classification (1933-1934) =
formalising difference.
 Sources for classification: 1) oral information provided by church,
2) physical measurements, 3) ten cow rule.
 Consequences: neither ethnic “social climbing” or “falling”
possible after 1933. For the fist time ever, they had become fixed
identities.
 Identity: creation, legitimation, institutionalisation.
c. Identities: political, economic, cultural
 Economic identities – result from development of markets
 Cultural identities – result from communities where language etc is
shared.
 When institutionalised, identities become political - not a marker of
cultural formation
 Codification of race/ ethnicity in law = political identity, not
cultural/ biological.
 Cultural identity codified as political identity becomes unlike
culture: no grey, no mobility
 Identity: creation, legitimation, institutionalisation, essentialising,
(no movement).
d. Forms of political identities
 Direct rule: race-based identities: settler and native
 Indirect rule: fractures race consciousness of natives into multiple
ethic identities.
 The latter governed through “customary law” enforced by “native
authority.”
 Ethnicity as cultural identity becomes a political one when legally
coded.
 Therefore: indirect rule executed through both race and ethnicity.
 Absurdity: only natives divide into ethnicities, not settlers.
 Race used to differentiate between colonised: those indigenous and
those not.
 Creates affinity between settlers and native minority.
 Generates subject races (Tutsi, South African coloureds and
Indians, Asians in East Africa) or virtual citizens.
 Anti-colonial violence -> master races; post-independence violence
-> directed at subject races.
 Identity: Identity: creation, legitimation, institutionalisation,
essentialising (no movement), ambivalence (Girardian: victim)
Conclusion (identity)
 Explanation of violence:
1. The politicisation of indigeneity (victim)
2. Failure of Rwandan nationalism to transcend colonial
native/alien divide
3. Failed revolution of ’59 (failed mythology).
Tutorial III
Reading:
K. M. Vandenberg (2006) “René Girard and the Rhetoric of
Consumption,” in Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture,
Vol. 12-13.
Questions:
1. Easy: Explain the role that mimetic desire historically played in the
shift from a producer to a consumer culture.
2. Quite easy: This shift can also be usefully explained by invoking
the difference between political and sociological propaganda.
Explain.
3. Quite easy: Using any example you can think of, illustrate the roles
played by political propaganda and sociological propaganda in the
formation of the violent group.
4. Difficult: At the heart of the relationship between model and
imitator lies a contradiction Girard describes as a “double bind”
(p268-269). According to Vandenberg (p268), the person most
susceptible to propaganda is the one who most often confronts this
contradiction. Explain.
2. Second major theme: the revolution of 1959
Introduction
1. Indirect rule: more complex independence than direct rule;
2. Direct: violence directed against foreigners (settlers)
3. Indirect: Against foreign power and subject people.
4. Complexity also key to successful transition (collaboration
between Hutu and anti-colonial Tutsi).
The revolution of 1959
1. Appeal to “Hutu-solidarity” = revolutionary rallying call
2. Result: dismantle local Tutsi power
3. Effect celebrated as revolution of 1959.
4. Mamdani: = socio-economic success but political failure
5. Significance: For the first time violence used to differentiate
between Hutu and Tutsi (ref. Praeg: transition from conflict ->
violent conflict)
6. Question: why transition to violence?
7. Answer: increasing state vs. society conflict. State
uncompromising (institutionalise difference); society more flexible
- > money economy, education (see Mamdani, pp106).
8. Result: production of Hutu counter-elite.
9. Two dynamics: restoration and revolution.
10.Restoration: of pre-colonial elites/cults prior to their subjugation
“as Hutu” through collaboration of colonialist and Tutsi king. (In
1962 some refused to be called “Hutu” instead of local clan name).
11.Revolution: replacement of Tutsi state elite with Hutu state elite
under the name of “replacing monarchy with democracy”
12.Common ground: elimination of Tutsi
13.By 1959: two proposals for independence following direct and
indirect rule logics.
 Tutsi king: defuse tension between white and black and centralise
monarchical power.
 Hutu: defuse tension between Hutu and Tutsi.
14.Period 1959 – 1964: accommodationist vs. exclusionist. Tutsi flee
or incorporate; Hutu: exclude Tutsi or accommodate.
15.Both accommodationist had accepted 1959 as fait accompli
16.After 1964: Tutsi exclusionists filter in to undermine Hutu.
Became known as inyenzi.
17.State reprisals violent and exceptional/anomalies. As raids
expanded, so reprisal massacres became the rule.
Conclusion:
1. Many claim genocide rooted in revolution.
2. True in two specific senses: 1) one context specific, 2) universal
and general.
 Context specific: genocide the culmination of repressive
massacres.
 Universal/general: the failure of post-revolutionary discourse
to mythologise the violent transition to democracy.
Mamdani:
“[The revolution of ‘59] turned sour in spite of real social gains, because
1959 repudiated only the consequences of colonial rule, but not the
native/setter dynamic that was its institutional premise. Instead of
pioneering a way beyond colonially shaped identities and destinies, 1959
locked Rwanda’s fate within the world of political identities constructed
by colonialism. Instead of the promised first act in a revolutionary drama
that would close the curtain on the colonial era, 1959 turned into a final
act desperately trying to breathe life into racialised identities born of the
colonial state. Indeed, 1959 ushered in a pursuit of justice so focussed
that it turned into revenge” (Mamdani, p36).
3. Third theme: the relationship between revolution of 1959 and the
genocide of 1994
General review structure:
1. Problem
2. Solutions
3. Contribution
4. Evaluation
*****
1. Problem:
Historical facts
2. Solution
1. Two interpretative possibilities: particular; universal.
2. Particular: Mamdani’s When victims become killers: colonialism,
nativism and the genocide in Rwanda (2001) (Post-colonial
studies).
3. Gains:
 Ethnicity: cultural identities -> political identities
 Colonialism: creation, legitimation, institutionalisation,
essentialising, ambivalence of subject peoples.
 Excess: use and institutionalisation of Hamitic hypothesis
 Revolution as failure; prefigures genocide.
4. Losses: no de-exceptionalising of extreme violence.
5. Solution: universalist interpretation
6. Conventional response: comparative (genocide studies).
3. Contribution
1. Alternative: Girardian analysis
2. Gains:
 De-exceptionalise (p27).
3. Risk:
 Banality of violence; aporia (p29)
4. Aim of text: Girard helps us map this aporia in both
manifestations:
 Understanding (universal, sacrificial structure of genocide)
vs. judgement (as outrage)
 Particular vs universal
5. Girard summary (eg. p35-36).
6. Failure of 1959 revolution (p39; 56-57).
7. Conclusion: genocide as deferred act of foundational violence
(p41)
8. Condition:
 generalisation of victimage category (inyenzi)
 victim ambivalence (sociological)
 accusatory ambivalence (“restoration of monarchy”) and
generalised to all Tutsi.
 mimesis (propaganda; co-opting of everyday language)
9. Excess: where scapegoating is consciously manipulated, only
extreme violence can make it work (p53)
10.Risk: aporia (p46-51)
4. Evaluation
Exam question: Is a combination of particularist and universalist
interpretations a way beyond the impasse of the aporia that haunts any
contemporary interpretation of acts of collective violence?
Tutorial IV
Reading:
K. Scott (2009) A Girardian Critique of the Liberal Democratic Peace
Theory, in Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Vol.
15/16, p45-62
Task:
Write a review of this article following the general structure of a review
as discussed in class:
1. Problem
2. Solution
3. Contribution
4. Evaluation